Introduction

So much has been written and said about the balance we try to attain between our personal lives — precious — and our professional lives — important. All of us know the workaholic, whether we see that guy or woman in the mirror or we recognize him or her in our organization, or in our personal lives, friendships, family relationships. We know people who can't seem to, or can't seem to want to, turn it off. They come home with their work still at work; they go on vacation, but there's still work. They're processing silently while they're eating dinner — not what's being set around the table, not what's being said throughout the course of the evening, or the weekend, or the vacation, but what's going on in their work lives, in their professional world.

And as important as that is — and those conversations are in those books and lectures — I think it's also important to recognize, maybe now more than ever, in your life and in mine, the importance of acknowledging the human being that comes to work. Not just the professional who's so good, so skilled at what he or she does, but the person that you are, that you bring to work. The person with all the complexities of your life, your story, that suddenly butts up with a client, your story that suddenly butts up with the front door of the office, wherever it is that you are. You're bringing your whole self to work.

And maybe that makes you fabulous at what you do. Maybe that's part of why you're engaging, charismatic, warm — because people know that you're empathetic to their own struggles, their own existence as human beings, not just as clients and as co-workers. But I think it's worth thinking about, in times of uncertainty in your life — phases, times when you just don't know what tomorrow or next year will hold, "will I," "when will I," "how will I," all those questions come up — to recognize the impact those have on the rest of our lives, personal and professional.

So I'm here with a particular task — call me your contentment officer, if you will. I'm not Loren; I'm not going to ask you for progress reports. I'm not Jeff; I'm not going to ask you for spreadsheets. I'm somebody who many of you know from working together in the past, conversations we've had. I'm somebody who's known Loren for many years and, despite that, still likes him a lot. And my aim here is to share with you a series of videos, and through that, I hope, a series of conversations — to look at who we are as people, to look at who you are, what you're going through in your lives, as much as you want to divulge or share that, but at least to get you to reflect on it. Not just to think about yourself as your professional self, but to realize all that you bring to your professional realm with your life.

I want to ask you, as often as possible in this conversation and the ones that will follow, to lift your eyes, to look up, to get perspective. Just step back from what you're doing, step back from your concept of who you are and what other people expect and demand from you, and recognize your own simple, complex humanity.

So you might want to know who I am and why I have the task of bringing these conversations to you. Well, one is Loren asked me to, based on the many conversations that he and I have, and the work that I've done with you on leadership retreats in the past as well. But also I'll tell you a little about myself professionally. I started work at age 13. It was ice cream, and then ice cream, and then more delicious ice cream. I didn't actually gain a lot of weight during those years — maybe I got sick of ice cream, but now I like it again. After that I went to the Air Force, and after the Air Force I went into broadcasting work and some theater work, overseas and in the US. And I went into management consultancy, and I worked with one of the top consulting firms on client projects throughout the world, mostly in Europe — a major automotive company, a pharmaceutical company, an airline, some big clients — where I learned a lot about people, about communication, and about managing change in particular.

I then went on — speaking of change — to becoming an opera singer, something that took me around the world many times. And then after that, actually, I shifted again, and that was toward religion and spirituality and that kind of leadership, which is something I do today. And today, in addition to communal religious leadership — leading a large community — I also am engaged in something particularly worthwhile and important to me personally, which is international interfaith dialogue: fostering great and meaningful dialogue that hopefully brings forth not just words but change in behavior and understanding. I had the pleasure and the privilege of meeting and blessing Pope Francis in the Vatican about a year ago, and then more recently I met with world religious leaders in Istanbul and in Rome, as well as in the United States.

So that's a brief resume. Essentially, now what I want to do is leave you with a story. I was working on a team brought together by UCLA Anderson School and Johnson & Johnson. We were working in East Africa, developing leadership in the healthcare realm, and one of my colleagues from Uganda told me a story of Russian Jewish origin, so let me share that with you. A man is walking at night in a forest — an older man — and suddenly he hears a shout: "Stop!" He looks, and he sees a guard pointing a rifle at him. The man slowly, with a smile, puts up his hands, and the officer shouts. He says, "Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you going?" And the man says, "Those questions again." And the officer, looking over the barrel of his rifle, shouts again: "Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you going?" And the man says, "How much do they pay you to ask me those questions?" The officer tells him how many kopecks a day he gets — or a week, or a month. And the old man says, "I'll pay you double if, every time you see me, you ask me those three questions: Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you going?" Soon we'll continue our conversation.